What is Regenerative Agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems. It focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting biosequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil.
Regenerative agriculture is not a specific practice itself. Rather, proponents of regenerative agriculture use a variety of sustainable agriculture techniques in combination. Practices include recycling as much farm waste as possible and adding composted material from sources outside the farm. Regenerative agriculture on small farms and gardens is often based on philosophies like permaculture, agroecology, agroforestry, restoration ecology, keyline design, and holistic management.
As soil health improves, input requirements may decrease, and crop yields may increase as soils are more resilient against extreme weather and harbor fewer pests and pathogens.
Regenerative agriculture mitigates climate change through carbon dioxide removal, i.e. it draws carbon from the atmosphere and sequesters it.
Regenerative Agriculture At Cherrywood Orchard
In 2023, we sourced local compost and spread it throughout our orchard, took an analysis of our soil and spread a cover crop to rejuvenate our soils and add nutrients, and hung birdboxes for swallows who eat our bug pests and two bee boxes for two colonies that harvest pollen from our flowers and make honey.
Local Compost
We worked with Dirt Rich & Compost in Columbia Falls who supplied us with 15 cubic yards of annual compost and perennial compost, which we spread throughout the orchard in April 2023. Compost adds complex organisms to our soil, which helps our trees grow big healthy cherries.
Soil Analysis & Cover Crop
We took soil samples to Westland Seed in Ronan, and their agronomists helped us create the perfect cover crop seed mix to add nutrients back into our soil. Flowering clover was one plant type in our seed mix. Clover is great at fixing nitrogen in the soil, it crowds out invasive weeds like dandelions and thistle, provides shade helping the ground retain moisture, and clover flowers produce pollen that our bees eat.
Birds & Bees
15 bird boxes were put up along our fencelines, and swallows moved in. These songbirds help us by eating small insects, like the destructive western cherry fruit fly.
2 bee boxes were placed in the orchard center. Most of our trees are self-fertile, but bees help improve our orchard ecology. Bees eat pollen from our cherry blossoms, cover crop flowers, and wildflowers.
